Tennessee Awards $5.5M to Strengthen Food Supply Chain Infrastructure
ams.usda.gov
ams.usda.gov
> Using RFSI funding, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture will fund projects that increase access to commercial kitchens and co-packing facilities. Additional funded projects will expand processing capacity, including adding product types, increasing production volumes, and supporting new wholesale/retail product lines. The state’s priorities are informed by stakeholder engagement and outreach to underserved producers to better understand their needs.
Looks like it costs 15k-250k to set up a commercial kitchen: https://www.kitchenall.com/blog/commercial-kitchen-cost.html
A new product line is 85k-175k: https://www.foodresearchlab.com/blog/new-food-product-develo...
I imagine they are doing grants that cover part of the costs not the whole thing. If they covered 50% of the cost and each project cost 100k, that would mean 110 projects, which is a lot in one state.
I see 22 commercial kitchens in TN currently: https://www.thekitchendoor.com/kitchen-rental/states/tenness... so if half of the projects were commercial kitchens, that would be a 250% increase.
I’d think this is going to help producers upgrade or replace some existing equipment. Probably a good thing. $5.5M more than the market had, right?
I do wonder if there is some low hanging fruit on more efficiently connecting different stages of food production. Like a traveling salesman problem with getting food producers to packing.
That 15k is a bit of a misnomer, a vent hood plus fire suppression is going to be $20k+ installed (or more depending on how much ductwork is needed).
Meanwhile:
- Herbicide residues are put into food supply to save farmer's some money on harvesting
- Monoculture GMO crops create a single point of failure vulnerability to disease and pests that could lead to famine
- Big ag tells farmers they can't save their own non-GMO seed
- John Deere, the McFlurry machines of farming, tells farmers to wait for a technician to reset a sensor using proprietary software during harvest season
- The USDA doesn't regulate the entire food supply, mostly meat
- Meat agriculture is a huge contributor to climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and air, water, and soil pollution
> Using RFSI funding, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture will fund projects that increase access to commercial kitchens and co-packing facilities. Additional funded projects will expand processing capacity, including adding product types, increasing production volumes, and supporting new wholesale/retail product lines. The state’s priorities are informed by stakeholder engagement and outreach to underserved producers to better understand their needs.
So is it adding facilities that producers (of crops?) can use to go from harvesting to a product that is ready to sell? Is it because small farmers don’t have relationship with processors? Or is it that big farms do it all on their own and there is no one for small farmers to turn to?
Also what will a few million achieve when individual machines probably cost a lot more? I would think any facility would be enormously expensive to build and operate.
As someone who used to work in the space, there are a lot of different ways for farmers to turn what they grow into something they sell. It can be as simple as a space at a farmer's market and as complex as a co-packer that turns fruit into jelly or chiles into hotsauce.
In the middle are commercial kitchens that let small food businesses safely make food to sell in stores and at markets. These are more expensive per unit to use than co-packers, but don't require the commitments that co-packers do.
There are also processors like grain or meat processors that have been consolidating. Here's a list of local grain mills: https://wholegrainscouncil.org/find-whole-grains/local-grain... . I see zero in TN, so maybe there's a need there?
There are also all kinds of tasks that need to happen that aren't related to food production/cooking, such as finding distributors, marketing, customer development and more. That's what "supporting new wholesale/retail product lines" means to me.
> Also what will a few million achieve when individual machines probably cost a lot more? I would think any facility would be enormously expensive to build and operate.
See my comment about costs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41142419
It's $5.5 for a grant program.
"The projects funded through this program will create new opportunities for the region’s small and midsize producers to thrive, expand access to nutritious food options, and increase supply chain resiliency.”
It sounds like they've identified challenges with small/medium producers being able to enter markets to compete with large producers (ie- family farms are disappearing), and it's the best way they can subsidize them without antagonizing Big Ag.
This $5.5m will disappear into the pockets of the cronies of politicians.
Why? Some of us would like to make proper cheese ...
“ According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, there were 202 disease outbreaks in the US due to drinking raw milk between 1998 and 2018, leading to 2,645 illnesses, 228 hospitalizations, and three deaths. In 2017, nearly 5 percent of Americans were thought to consume unpasteurized milk products, including raw cheese, and raw dairy products led to 840 times more illnesses than pasteurized products.”
840x higher risk of food borne illness is significant.
US population in 2017 was 324 million. 5% of that is 16 million people. 2645 out of 16 million is 0.017%.
Does that make it sound significant? Is that even as dangerous as refined sugar?
In my mind that's well within the risk range of "slap a warning label on it and let people make their own decisions".
The benefit to not regulating irrelevant things like raw milk, is that we can put regulatory funds toward things that kill more then 3 people in 20 years--that's your statistic, I pulled it from your post. How many people die of diabetes caused by added sugars each year, I wonder?
To be honest, I don't really care if raw milk remains illegal. My main objection to your post was the manipulation of statistics to make an insignificant issue seem significant.
As someone else says, we sell it in Europe and we’re fine. We also sell detergent and people know not to put it in their cereal.
Raw cheese producers tend to be better because they have to use fresh milk, whereas pasteurization lets anyone use old not-so-hygienic milk from mixed sources. It's of course potentially a lot unsafer if controls are bypassed, that is something to take into consideration. But if we follow that reasoning, we would end up with long-life UHT milk.
Regulations favor the established.
One thing that has changed in the past few years is that programs to help local farmers get organic certifications has made organic certification much more accessible to local farmers. Could there be similar programs to help smaller meat packers comply with regulation?
I'm not saying you are wrong, but there are a lot more people on Hacker News who are just against all regulation, than there are people who actually know why specific regulations exist and are against them for informed reasons.
The current regulations favor the established. In a society that is not entirely regulatory captured, where money does not equal political speech as much, regulations could favor independent family farmers.
I am writing this from the middle of EU farm country, and one of the things that regulations/policies do here is prevent multi-national corporations from buying family farms. The argument against this policy is that family farms are economically inefficient. I will take that trade-off every single day.
Livestock welfare regs in the EU did end up favoring corporations in recent years, to some extent. But, at least in my area, family crop farms will be protected by regulations for the foreseeable future.
Which is why de-regulation is the answer in this case. If a regulation is bad, roll it back, don't put another layer of complexity on top. Complexity, again, favors the incumbents. They have more resources to deal with all the nuances.
Could you go into what regulations you think are wrong? I am by no means an expert on the topic, but I'm under the impression that meat packing regulations exist because the meat packing industry was causing massive harm to workers, consumers, the environment, etc. I mean, high schoolers read The Jungle for a reason.
One thing that has changed in the past few years is that programs to help local farmers get organic certifications has made organic certification much more accessible to local farmers. Could there be similar programs to help smaller meat packers comply with regulation?
I'm not saying you are wrong, but there are a lot more people on Hacker News who are just against all regulation, than there are people who actually know why specific regulations exist and are against them for informed reasons.
I'm not saying you're wrong on your topic, but this is basically a subsidy program for family farms growing local/regional crops, not some nebulous direct cash infusion.